Let me go on record saying this before I get hate mail, I do not believe it is proper for any equipment manufacturer to charge for support. We do not charge our customers for support and they only pay us $20 a month so I am against them charging for support contracts. However it is a game and I run a business and if having and needing one is how the game has to be played then I get one. No equipment manufacturer cares about whether any of us likes it, they are a business and in it for the bottom line. I don't like it when telcos charge for installs on PRI and T1 circuits as I feel ordering it should be enough but they do and hide behind their tariffs to justify it so we pay it. I had GTE recently charge me for a premise visit after I ordered two new PRI's and this is on top of paying the normal $600 install for each PRI, I called them on it and they said we had to come out didn't we? I said I would like to see you install a new circuit without coming out. Face it, all small ISP's are being screwed by any big business anyway they can find.
You've not worked with this equipment for very long, have you? ;)
3 Years and I have had my ups and downs.
Seriously though...a large number of the people on this list are quite capable of supporting ourselves on this equipment largely. We need hardware coverage of some specific cards...for IgLou, we need to cover DSP's, we don't need to cover Arc's really since we have some spares, and we *CERTAINLY* don't want to cover quads since they're pretty much disposable at this point.
I agree we to do not need 3 Coms help except when hardware fails and we need replacements.
But with cisco, you can get a different level of coverage on each piece of equipment if you like...try doing that with 3Com. 3Com won't even honor it if you have different levels of coverage *at different sites* (as Paul Farber just pointed out...and has happened to us in the past...even after 3Com gets the money for it...that's borderline illegal there, breach of contract).
Before I had a contract all kinds of problems getting 3 Com's help wanted to kick Total Controls out door but with a contract no complaints, keep in mind I have the full support contract and I always get the help I need or want. I guess my case is an exception to the rule from what you are saying, but it works for me so I cannot complain. If it did not I would complain believe me. One thing I do now when I do need to call 3 Com for support is I ask for the same person which helps a lot as he knows who I am which expedites things as he knows when I call we have already tried everything. Clint - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.